Rap Class: Wednesday, Oct. 31

Portland beatmaker John Kammerle wants to take the songs stuck in his head and cram them into yours.

[SAMPLE-BASED] To quote an overused hip-hop proverb,
sampling is an art. For local beatmaker and DJ John Kammerle, aka Rap
Class, it’s also a turn-on.

“I don’t want that to
sound wrong—but I’ve always gotten off on that,” he says. “Sampling is
me wanting to be a part of a song because of the good feeling I feel
when I hear it. It’s always been a fantasy.”

Kammerle’s desire to be a part of the music has defined his life, which, in part, has helped define his music.

It all stems from the
Jazzercise classes his mom taught while he was growing up in Arizona.
There, Kammerle was introduced to classic groups like the Beatles, and
he found that certain fragments of songs would stick in his head. He
wished he could hear them endlessly.

Flash forward to high school, where Kammerle was introduced to two albums that would change his life: John Frusciante’s To Record Only Water for Ten Days and the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique.
The first convinced him that he wanted to write songs for a living. The
second showed him that, through sampling, he could fulfill his wish to
be a part of the songs he loved.

Only recently did Kammerle, 25, release his first proper full-length, the appropriately titled Greatest Hits,
through the Dropping Gems label, a crew he’s been rolling with ever
since he moved to Portland four years ago. The album is built on sharply
chopped samples, warm melodies and buzzy synth lines, and reflects the
catchy songs that stuck in his brain as a youth.

“I’m not trying to
reinvent the wheel or anything…I just want to put out catchy music so
you can sing along to it,” he says. “Sometimes I hear little bits of
songs that are so great, and they make me feel so great to hear them
over and over again. What I’m trying to convey is just comfort.”

That comfort can also
be heard in his DJ sets, which are often feel-good, dance-heavy
affairs. He sometimes plays his own music, but playing songs by other
artists that haven’t been heard yet gives him just as much satisfaction,
he says.

This
is partly why he’s been able to get more gigs lately. But, like the
millions of other musicians in Portland, Kammerle is unable to live
solely off music: He currently works in a hotel kitchen.

Scraping by in order
to do what you love, though, is no problem, especially when you have a
good song stuck in your head. And Kammerle has many.

“For me, it’s DJing
or bust,” he says. “As long as I can DJ when I’m asked and when I want
to, that’s fine for me. That’s all I want to do.”